James J.A. Mercer

In 2003, eight Rhode Islanders created a secret apartment inside a busy mall and lived there for four years, filming everything along the way. Far more than a prank, the secret apartment became a deeply meaningful place for all involved.

After receiving a name from its grandmother, a baby is faced with the prospects of knowledge, love and death in a game of two truths and a lie.

A destitute man builds a life for himself out of furniture that has washed up on the shore, making an unremarkable patch of beach his home.

The machinations of a futuristic landfill.

Against the odds, our daydreaming protagonist survives a catastrophic train crash and stumbles through suggestive, inexplicable and unconvincing infrastructural spaces. His sense of detachment is called into question as ambiguities accumulate. The line between chance and causality blurs.

After receiving a name from its grandmother, a baby is faced with the prospects of knowledge, love and death in a game of two truths and a lie.

After receiving a name from its grandmother, a baby is faced with the prospects of knowledge, love and death in a game of two truths and a lie.

A collaborative film between Yifan Jiang and James Mercer

The Black Box is a slide lecture exploring, among other topics, more than a century of the history of online shopping. 124 slides, approximately one hour.